I managed to get myself, along with Icecold (my audio guy!) and Durgesh (fellow Admin on EvoTechnik) (Mitesh and singh were both also meant to attend: But singh couldn't make the rescheduled date and Mitesh is Mitesh! ) up to Silverstone on Friday 23rd Nov for an open pitlane day organised by the BMW Car club UK.

The day was originally planned to go ahead in September: And infact, we even made it all the way there! But the heavens absolutely opened. To the extent that in the end the day had to be called off.
To the extreme credit of Nick Wright from bmwcc and also of course the people at Silverstone, we were offered a raincheck for an alternative date free of charge! That day was the November date. Very good of everyone involved because the reality is Silverstone didn't HAVE to offer us any more than 25% of our money back: And given the day was over £300 per car, that would have stung - to say the least.

I've just the one pic of the cars as they were at the September date, as in the end I managed a paltry lap and a half before having to head back home.. Boo!

So, few pics from the day from my perspective: Followed by pics from the track photographer and even some in car footage

With my pics, You'll have to excuse image quality: All images taken with iPhone 5...

As I posted on facebook that morning: Whilst you guys were queuing to get to work, this was the queue I had in front of me:

Note the M5. Teddy gave me the instruction to "get the M5". More on that later...

Few shots from the paddock area...

Loving this mod! Diet coke mod! It's like my dream car!!!!!

Attached to a cute little radical. Damn this thing could SHIFT..

Nice new shape Hartge Z4..

I tried my best to get some "drive by" shots, again iPhone 5 only..

Gorgeous E30 ...

Some more.. Couple of diggy in here too!

Now you might notice the state of my wheels!

There's a reason for that .. I'll share later on!

....
Ok so back to Teddy's request for me to get the M5! Mission accomplished........

The guy went over a bit of white paint on the way onto the back straight. Thing is the instructor said in the morning briefing repeatedly "STAY OFF THE PAINT". Also the guy was a bit of a tool. Whoooooops though. What you can't see as I didn't shoot it was the equal amount of damage to the front! In reality, I was getting a passenger run in the silver GTR I got a pic of up there somewhere, when all of a sudden this M5 is all over our arse. I say to the guy in the end, who seems to be getting slightly irratic due to the abuse from behind - to just let the M5 get past. It's not worth it. I should also point out that he was trying to overtake into every apex even though it's completely against trackday etiquette. You overtake on the straights and that's it!

I won't shed a tear for him, but it was upsetting to see the poor car in such a state.

Basically, the very next lap after we let him through, and at the same section we let him through: We saw him in the armco nose first. Got back to the pits and saw the car as above. Oh deary me...

So that's it for my pics. As I was mostly behind the wheel after all not behind my phone.

The track photographer got a couple of awesome pics of me going around. Excuse the watermark, I'm not trying to 'steal' his pics, just edited the plates out and lightroom auto watermarked them! All his shots can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bmwccgb...7632135246399/

And a couple of Durgesh..

So onto the , see the camera footage I collected from the incarcam.

Video 1: I did explain that my wheels were so dirty for a reason? See the below.

Summary of my thoughts as this video runs through:

Quote:

Oh snap, I'm overtaking Diggy! Awesome

Oh snap, I'm overtaking an M5! Awesome

Wheeeee, 130mph on the straight. Awesome.

WTF is that car in front of me doing, his ABS is lit up like a Christmas tree! He should learn how to brake. Not awesome.

..............Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.............. Really the opposite of awesome

Then of course for added comedy effect and you can hear the parking sensors clearly enough as I try it..

Quote:

"Let's reverse out. Oh, not going to work... Awesome."

The massive steam is from the brakes which were close to boiled already by this point. Nothing horrendous from the engine or etc!

The only casualty was my rear 313s got pretty scratched I'll be contacting Dips in due course..

Video 2: Second video, this is the session where I gave Diggy a run round as passenger.

You'll have to excuse the verbal diahorrea from me. I can't help but keep talking!

.....Soooo thats it!

What did I learn? Well firstly that I NEED TO LEARN THAT WHEN THE CONDITIONS ARE CHANGEABLE I SHOULD BE CAREFUL AND NOT HOON PAST 991s, M5s, GT3s etc etc AND THEN END UP IN THE BLOODY GRAVEL! Pride comes before a fall and I'm lucky that all that happened was a little kitty litter, and no damage to the car (except for my alloys a little bit. Boooooo hiss... ). From watching the video back it seems to me that I could have turned in. At the time, initially, I damn sure couldn't turn in. I'd have ended up hitting the gravel side on and rolling the car. I was doing 90 as I went under the gantry. But by the time I actually leave the track: I strongly think with my wits about me I could have made a late turn in and saved myself from causing a red flag! In any case, shit happens. I've been on 7 or 8 trackdays in total, more than one a year.. And never left the track too far. I'm glad that if my confidence is going to get knocked back - that it happened in a way that I got away with basically!

Other than that, I loved the day out. Loved it. I got some tuition from an ARDS instructor and it's incredible how a 10% change in your lines or approach can make such a massive difference! I thought I was "on it" until I got him in the passenger seat. He's telling me to flat it and at times I just can't believe that I could do it..

I'm looking forward to the next similar day! And thanks again to Nick Wright from bmwcc for organising!

I took 2k off my rears and 1k off my fronts according to the computer - but to be honest the fluid could do with a change now. Braking after the event was awful: But after giving the car a 12 hour rest it recovered significantly. I may just be imagining it though: As it's fine really, just maybe not "as fine.." who knows..

Obviously, similar is true of engine oil which now needs doing quite soon and of course I've removed a decent amount of rubber too..

I was back there again yesterday and had a blast. Two days at Silverstone GP in one week is a nice way to round off the track season.

In the morning it looked a bit white and you could hardly tell the track from the rest. It was icy everywhere, but with a delayed start it soon warmed up and we had 5 hours of dry running in the sun. The day ran through lunch which is nice as the days are pretty short now, so loosing an hour for lunch is a fair chunk of the day.

Compared to my experience from last Friday this was a much better day and we had very few closures. Most drivers were quite considerate and let other people pass. I only had one red flag affect my track time. The other two happen when I was on a cool down lap, so for once it wasn't a frustrating experience. Some time it can be a bit of a luck of the draw and who attends that decides if you're going to have a good day or not.

There were also some proper quick cars there and it's cool to see how quick they are on the straight and through the corners. I saw two Ferrari 458's; one road version and one a fully race car prepped. It was nice to see both being driven hard. Most of the time you see a Ferrari on a track day they only go quick on the straights and park it on the corners. There were also a couple of Porsche GT3's to sneak up on you and some pretty fast Kumho BMW E46 M3 race cars on slicks giving the road going Ferrari a run for its money.

Only longer delay on the day was when an Escort Cosworth spilled oil all the way down hangar straight. From the thick smoke it looked like the engine had let go but I later heard that the it was just an oil pipe that had come off making a right mess of the track and the engine. For us it was a good excuse to grab some lunch.